Bride of Frankenstein
by YamatoKai
Summary: Sakura Minamoto saw the girl she loved die right in front of her. Now, she's determined to bring her back.


For a time, it seemed to one Sakura Minamoto that nothing in her life would ever go right.

From injuries to illnesses, every important event in her life was ruined by some circumstance completely out of her control. The school play, the relay race, her eams, everything. It became a joke among her classmates. She was the girl with the "legendary" bad luck, and that was all she'd ever be.

And then she found Iron Frill, and its leader, Ai Mizuno. Ai was everything Sakura wished she could be, skilled, determined, graceful...

Beautiful.

Through Iron Frill's music, Ai reached out to Sakura and lifted her up when she was at her lowest. The idol captured her attention, becoming her role model, emotional rock, and if she was entirely honest with herself, her first love. With Ai's voice ringing in her ears, Sakura picked herself up, and defied her luck.

And it worked.

The day of an important test, she woke up with a sore throat and a fever. But where the old her would have given up and wallowed in despair, the new her dragged herself out of bed, put on a hundred-yen medical mask, and marched to school with her favorite songs looping on her CD player. She scored a perfect one-hundred.

To Sakura, it was a validation of her respect and love for Ai. Her mood and grades skyrocketed, and soon her "legendary" status faded into memory. For the first time in as long as she could remember, it felt like she could do anything, as long as she set her mind to it. So, when she saw an ad seeking applicants for a new sponsored idol group, she leapt at it.

After all, becoming an idol meant becoming more like the person she so strongly admired. It would allow her to inspire others like she herself had been inspired. And, in her most optimistic fantasies, it would allow her to meet that beautiful girl as an equal, and perhaps capture her heart.

The day of her audition was a happy one. She woke up early, the sounds of Iron Frill echoing through her room as she got ready, and rushed out the front door with a smile on her face. Right as she reached the far side of her front lawn, she tripped on a fallen branch and stumbled to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk. Then, just as she steadied herself and prepared to step into the street, a truck came roaring past at over twice the speed limit, in full defiance of the traffic light not twenty feet from her house.

Once again her freakish luck had intervened at a critical moment. Only this time, it had saved her life. If that wasn't proof that her life was improving, she didn't know what was. So, despite being somewhat frightened by the close call, the incident ultimately only served to bolster her confidence.

For the next four months, she worked hard to become an idol. She practiced hard and kept her eyes on her goal, impressing the producers and her fellow rookie idols. For four months she strove tirelessly towards her goal, before finally she decided to reward herself. She'd saved up enough money, so she splurged on a VIP ticket to Iron Frill's next concert.

It rained that day, but the crowd didn't care, and neither did Iron Frill. The show went on, the music washing away any discomfort the rain might have caused. Throughout it all, Sakura stood just at the edge of the stage, waving a glowstick and cheering her idol on. Then at the height of the performance, Ai Mizuno came right to the stage's front, so close that Sakura could almost touch her.

"Mizuno-san!" she shouted, then, and for her efforts earned a quick smile directed her way. If there was any lingering doubt in her mind that she loved Ai, that single smile dispelled them. It was the happiest moment of Sakura's life.

And then Ai raised her hand to the sky, and a bolt of lightning descended on the stage. Sakura shut her eyes to shield them from the sudden flash, and when she opened them, Ai was dead.

It was the most horrific moment of Sakura's life.

All she could do was stare in disbelief at the charred body in front of her, as it slowly crumpled to the stage floor, one arm dangling over the edge. She reached out, her mind blank, and took the limp hand in her own. She felt the tingle of electricity, a fraction of the voltage that had just burnt Ai Mizuno to a crisp.

The next thing Sakura could remember was waking up in the hospital a day later. She'd gone completely nonresponsive, the doctors told her. Some kind of psychotic break brought about by trauma. Perfectly understandable, given the circumstances.

Funny. The only thing that felt like it was broken was her heart.

They released her, and her parents took her home. As soon as they arrived, she locked herself in her room and cried. Without even needing to be asked, her parents called the school to inform them that Sakura would be taking a week off. So for seven days she cried. Ai's family acted quickly to head off the circling media vultures, and while Sakura mourned, the fearless leader of Iron Frill was entombed in cold earth.

Some of Sakura's schoolmates and fellow rookie idols tried to visit her, but she turned them away. They didn't come back. The only visitor to show up every day was a boy from her class who had volunteered to deliver her schoolwork. She never spoke to him, merely accepting the work and his pitying gaze with equal detachment.

On the seventh day, he delivered her work and left quickly. So quickly, in fact, that he was gone by the time she realized he had slipped something extra in with her schoolwork. It was a thick book, bound in dark, rough leather. The cover was utterly blank, save for a single name written in Roman lettering, the author perhaps.

_Abdul Alhazred._

Curiosity managed to pierce through the shroud of her despair, and she opened the book.

Page after page she read through the bizarre tome, anger steadily filling her. Laid out before her were methods to contact the dead, to speak with them, or even...to bring them back. Was this some sort of sick joke, she wondered? Or did the boy actually think he was _helping_ by giving her this?

She grit her teeth and shoved the book in her bag, and resolved to bring it with her to school tomorrow. She would give it back to the creep, possibly by breaking its spine over his head. At least, that was the plan.

Instead, she found herself staring at a dead poodle, the tiny animal having been run over along Sakura's route to school. She couldn't help but feel like fate itself was mocking her. Was this the price of overcoming her bad luck? Was she cursed to be stalked by death? It had already taken Ai from her. What more did it want?!

A strange mania gripped her, and she recalled something she had read yesterday, in that stupid book.

_Animals have simple, pliable souls. For this reason, they are perfect candidates for an aspiring practitioner's first reanimation. Particularly loyal subjects, such as domestic dogs or other such pets, do not even require an offering, meaning that the ritual can be conducted with only a simple circle drawn in chalk or blood._

It was absurd. Absolutely ridiculous. Nothing could return from the dead.

And yet, she knelt down, scooped up the poodle's broken body, and carried it into a shadowed alley. And yet, she sat it down there, her thumb rising slowly to her mouth.

She...was going to prove, here and now, that there was no such thing as magic that could revive the dead. That was why she was doing this.

She bit down, wincing at the sharp pain.

With her own blood she drew a circle around the tiny animal, just as the book had instructed. Once finished, she stood, and stepped back from her work. Her injured hand fell to her side, still dripping blood, while her other hand retrieved the book. Navigating to the correct page, she read out the incantation.

Immediately, the body began twitching, a series of sickening cracks echoing out through the alley as shattered bones reformed. Sakura watched in fear and astonishment as, impossibly, the dog staggered to its feet. Her heart pounded in her ears, and she took a step back as it turned to face her. Before she could react it leapt at her, colliding with her chest and causing her to fall back onto the ground with a pained gasp.

_This is it,_ she thought to herself, and squeezed her eyes shut.

Only to open them in surprise a moment later as the dog let out a happy bark and began licking her face. Out of reflex, Sakura reached up and pushed it away, the little poodle falling back to sit on her stomach. She stared at it as it panted in excitement and wagged its tail.

The implications of what had just occurred began to settle in. She had resurrected the dog, and it was behaving like a normal animal. It was still clearly dead, with glassy eyes and a large wound on its back, but it was moving around and acting like nothing was wrong. As far as she could tell, she had actually returned the dog's soul to its body. Which meant...

It was all real. She could bring the dead back to life.

Sakura sat up, the undead poodle settling into her lap, and looked over at the book. It had fallen from her grasp when the dog slammed into her, and now lay open, an illustration of a human body laying in the center of a circle far more complex than the one she had just drawn taking up an entire page.

Slowly, a plan began to come together in her head.


End file.
